The construction and the resulting operating data of bearing bushes which are used in a chassis of a motor vehicle may influence the driving and steering properties of the motor vehicle. Relatively minor changes to a spring constant or stiffness of the bearing bushes can have considerable effects on the vehicle properties, such as the understeer or oversteer behavior and chassis noise, vibrations and harshness. Depending on the setting of the bearing bush, the motor vehicle may have a relatively “soft” or a relatively “hard” running behavior.
Different bearing bushes are known from the generally known prior art in the chassis field of a motor vehicle. Firstly, purely mechanical bearing bushes or rubber bearings are known which have a defined stiffness. Furthermore, hydraulically damped chassis bushes with fixed or variable stiffness are known. Moreover, bearings with magnetorheological liquids or magnetorheological elastomers are known, it being possible for the stiffness to be varied via a magnetic field.
For example, DE 696 22 141 T2 discloses a method for producing and using a suspension bush with variable stiffness for controlling the relative movement between a chassis link in a motor vehicle and a frame component of the motor vehicle. The suspension bush has a variable stiffness which is realized by virtue of the fact that a magnetorheological elastomer or gel is enclosed, the stiffness of which can be set variably over a broad range, to be precise by way of a controllable magnetic field. The variable controllable magnetic field is generated by means of an electromagnet structure which is integrated completely into a suspension bush structure as part of the structure.